Fantastico
Fantastico is a web application that helps in building Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Joomla, Drupal, etc. and blogging applications like WordPress.
Other web applications which can be installed using Fantastico include- customer relation applications, discussion boards, E-commerce applications, hosting billing, polls, survey applications, etc.
This makes the cPanel a complete web management tool that is easy to operate and, in this way, cPanel has become a boon to the webmasters, who earlier used to maintain their websites mostly through programming knowledge and technical skills.
Now, cPanel comes bundled along with web hosting packages and helps in the webmasters to manage their website and its files.
Softaculous
Softaculous refers to a commercial script library that automates the installation of commercial and open-source web applications to any website. The Softaculous scripts are executed at the Admin area of a website control panel, typically by an interface tool such as cPanel.
Softaculous applications typically create tables in a database, install software, adjust permissions and modify the web-server configuration files. Softaculous targets open-source software and available in Pro and Free versions.
The free version can support over 50 applications and the Pro version provides a unit-step installation of over 280 applications.
Comparing Fantastico and Softaculous
Both Fantastico and Softaculous can be compared to a number of parameters related to their usage and performance.
Some of the comparison parameters include the following-
1. Number of Scripts
In the case of Fantastico, the number of scripts in the Free version is 50, whereas, in Softaculous, the number of scripts is 54. The paid version of Softaculous provides 310 scripts.
2. User Interface
Softaculous is known for a better user interface than Fantastico, though, both of them provide good options for the end-users. With Softaculous, it is easy to customize the user interface, whereas it is not easily customizable with Fantastico.
3. Regular Backups
With Softaculous, it is easy to take the backup of the website, whereas with Fantastico it becomes quite difficult. This holds true only when there is a backup option already in place.
4. Updates
Softaculous tends to update the systems on a regular basis, but with Fantastico, there are system updates, but not as regular as Softaculous.
5. Scripts
Fantastico provides only PHP scripts, but in Softaculous offers PHP, Pearl, Java, etc.
